Thomas Mott Osborne: “so often when we hear of events in the Middle East the reports are negative, sometimes even the discussion on the floor…”

“so often when we hear of events in the Middle East the reports are negative, sometimes even the discussion on the floor reflects a great deal of negativism. {time} 1830 Recently, I led a delegation to Jordan and Iraq and later to Germany. Matter of fact, we just returned yesterday. And I thought I would report on what I saw there because so often soldiers say we really wish you would go back and tell the American people the war we are fighting and not the one that they see on television or in the newspapers. So, on previous trips, I had been amazed at how positive the morale was. Everyplace that I went, soldiers seemed to be rather upbeat, pulled together, seemed to have a sense of mission. As we flew into the Al Asad, which is a somewhat remote base about 90 miles west of Baghdad out in the desert, extreme cold, no vegetation, no trees, no grass, as we landed there in the dust and the sand, I thought, this is the place where we are going to see some people who are really pretty negative about what is going on, and I was really surprised. There were 180 Nebraskans from my home State there. That is why I went there. They had not had a CODEL there for at least 9 months, maybe never there. And again I saw the same thing, a sense of accomplishment, a real sense of pride in what they were doing. I pressed them, and I talked to them, and I still got no negative comments and no major complaints.…”